"So, my beautiful fat girlfriend, Cassidy, is threatening to kick me to the curb again, my best friend suddenly wants to put the brakes on our lives of fabulous fun, my mom and big sister are plotting a future in which I turn into an atomic vampire, and my dad, well, my dad is a big fat question mark that I'm not sure I want the answer to."

The Long Way Home

Marnie is just 35 when her boyfriend, Brian, drops dead of a sudden heart attack. Stunned by his death, Marnie finds her greatest grief is for Troy, Brian’s son whom she has raised as her own since he was a kindergartener. When he is reclaimed by his train wreck of a birth mother, Troy’s departure drives Marnie to a grief group at the local rec center. There she finds unexpected allies, three strangers who join her in an impulsive road trip from Wisconsin to Las Vegas to reconnect with Troy.

Timbuktu

Mr. Bones, the canine hero of this astonishing book, is the sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, a brilliant and troubled homeless man from Brooklyn. As Willy's body slowly expires, he sets off with Mr. Bones for Baltimore in search of his high-school English teacher and a new home for his companion. Mr. Bones is our witness during their journey, and out of his thoughts, Paul Auster has spun one of the richest, most compelling tales in American fiction.

Strange Highways

Joey Shannon, an alcoholic whose life has been going nowhere for 20 years, returns to his hometown for the funeral of his father. As he leaves town, he gets a mysterious second chance to relive the night in 1975 when his life began its downward spiral: to both literally and figuratively take the road that he didn't originally take. On this road he is supremely tested by conflict with his successful and charismatic older brother P.J., by conflict between his cynicism and his lost faith, and by conflict between the ultimate good and evil.

Still Missing

On the day she was abducted, Annie O’Sullivan, a 32-year-old Realtor, had three goals: sell a house, forget about a recent argument with her mother, and be on time for dinner with her ever-patient boyfriend. The open house is slow, but when her last visitor pulls up in a van as she’s about to leave, Annie thinks it just might be her lucky day after all.

The Barkeep

Justin Chase is the perfect barkeep, tending bar as he lives his life, in a state of Zen serenity, until Birdie Grackle, a foul-mouthed alcoholic, walks into his bar and makes a startling confession. Six years ago Justin’s life was ripped apart when he discovered his mother’s bludgeoned corpse. Now Justin’s father is serving a life sentence and Justin drowns his emotions in a pool of inner peace. But when Birdie claims he murdered Justin’s mother for cash, Justin is hurled back to the emotions, back to the past, and, most frightening of all, back to the father he tried to leave behind.

I Capture the Castle

"I write this sitting at the kitchen sink" is the first line of a novel about love, sibling rivalry, and a bohemian existence in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Cassandra Mortmin's journal records her fadingly glamorous stepmother, her beautiful, wistful older sister, and the man to whom they owe both their isolation and poverty: Father. The author of one experimental novel, and a minor cause celebre, he has since suffered from writer's block and is determined to drag his family down with him.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Six years after four family members died of arsenic poisoning, the three remaining Blackwoods—elder, agoraphobic sister Constance; wheelchair-bound Uncle Julian; and 18-year-old Mary Katherine, or, Merricat—live together in pleasant isolation. Merricat has developed an idiosyncratic system of rules and protective magic to guard the estate against intrusions from hostile villagers. But one day a stranger arrives—cousin Charles, with his eye on the Blackwood fortune.

Left Drowning

What does it take to rise from life's depths, swim against the current, and breathe? Weighted down by the loss of her parents, Blythe McGuire struggles to keep her head above water as she trudges through her last year at Matthews College. Then a chance meeting sends Blythe crashing into something she doesn't expect - an undeniable attraction to a dark-haired senior named Chris Shepherd, whose past may be even more complicated than her own.

Flat-Out Love

He was tall, at least six feet, with dirty blond hair that hung over his eyes. His T-shirt read Nietzsche Is My Homeboy. So, that was Matt. Who Julie Seagles likes. A lot. But there is also Finn. Who she flat out loves. Complicated? Awkward? Completely. But really, how was this freshly-minted Boston transplant and newbie college freshman supposed to know that she would end up living with the family of an old friend of her mother’s? This was all supposed to be temporary.

Firefly Lane: A Novel

Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the mainstay of their lives. For 30 years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship: jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they've survived it all, until a single act of betrayal tears them apart...and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test.

The Hollow Ground

The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced 11-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung-stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the “curse” laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires.

A Long Way Home

At only five years old, Saroo Brierley got lost on a train in India. Unable to read or write or recall the name of his hometown or even his own last name, he survived alone for weeks on the rough streets of Calcutta before ultimately being transferred to an agency and adopted by a couple in Australia. Despite his gratitude, Brierley always wondered about his origins. One day, after years of searching, he miraculously found what he was looking for and set off to find his family.

Absolutely Almost

Albie has never been the smartest kid in his class. He has never been the tallest. Or the best at gym. Or the greatest artist. Or the most musical. In fact, Albie has a long list of the things he's not very good at. And his parents keep reminding him of those things all the time...even when it's just by accident. But then Albie gets a new babysitter, Calista, who helps him figure out all of the things he is good at and how he can take pride in himself.

The Stranger

Albert Camus' The Stranger is one of the most widely read novels in the world, with millions of copies sold. It stands as perhaps the greatest existentialist tale ever conceived, and is certainly one of the most important and influential books ever produced. Now, for the first time, this revered masterpiece is available as an unabridged audio production.

Frances and Bernard

Bernard Elliot, a poet, and Frances Reardon, a fiction writer, meet at a writers' colony during the summer of 1957 and begin a friendship and correspondence. Bernard, well-born and Harvard-educated, is gregarious, reckless, and passionate; Frances, the precocious daughter of a middle-class Irish family, is circumspect, wry, and more than a little judgmental. What starts as an exploration of faith eventually becomes a romance, a development complicated by Bernard's fall into manic depression and Frances' struggle to decide whether she is strong enough to weather the illness with him for the long term.

Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave

Shyima Hall was born in Egypt on September 29, 1989, the seventh child of desperately poor parents. When she was eight, her parents sold her into slavery. Shyima then moved two hours away to Egypt's capitol city of Cairo to live with a wealthy family and serve them eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When she was ten, her captors moved to Orange County, California, and smuggled Shyima with them. Two years later, an anonymous call from a neighbor brought about the end of Shyima's servitude - but her journey to true freedom was far from over.

The Edible Woman

Marian is determined to be ordinary. She lays her head gently on the shoulder of her serious fiancé and quietly awaits marriage. But she didn't count on an inner rebellion that would rock her stable routine, and her digestion. Marriage a la mode, Marian discovers, is something she literally can't stomach ... The Edible Woman is a funny, engaging novel about emotional cannibalism, men and women, and desire to be consumed.

Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny

On the 12th floor of the Acme Building, on a cold February day in St. Paul, Guy Noir looks down the barrel of a loaded revolver in the hands of geezer gangster Joey Roast Beef, who is demanding to hear what lucrative scheme Guy is cooking up with stripper-turned-women's-studies-professor Naomi Fallopian. Everyone wants to know, and Guy faces them one by one, as he and Naomi pursue a dream of earning gazillions by selling a surefire method of dramatic weight loss.

My Antonia

Through Jim Burden's endearing, smitten voice, we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant life in the Nebraska heartland, with all its insistent bonds. Guiding the way are some of literature's most beguiling characters: the Russian brothers plagued by memories of a fateful sleigh ride, Antonia's desperately homesick father and self-indulgent mother, and the coy Lena Lingard. Holding the pastoral society's heart, of course, is the bewitching, free-spirited Antonia.

The Vanishing

Recently widowed and rendered penniless by her Ponzi-scheming husband, Julia Bishop is eager to start anew. So when a stranger appears on her doorstep with a job offer, she finds herself accepting the mysterious yet unique position: caretaker to his mother, Amaris Sinclair, the famous and rather eccentric horror novelist whom Julia has always admired...and who the world believes is dead.

Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change

The new audio edition of the self-published hit, offering powerful strategies to end procrastination!

Why do we sabotage our own best intentions? How can we eliminate procrastination from our lives for good? Based on current psychological research and supplemented with clear strategies for change, this concise guide will help listeners finally break free from self-destructive ideas and habits, and move into freedom and accomplishment.

The Masqueraders

After participating in the Jacobite Rising of 1745, Robin and Prudence, brother and sister, become engaged in a swashbuckling, romantic adventure. Our hero and heroine must cross-dress and switch genders if they are to escape prosecution a humorous move that allows Heyer to explore the manners and language affectations of the period as the two romp through the elite saloons and clubs of London.

The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

At first glance, Josh Hanagarne seems an improbable librarian. He stands 6'7", competes in strongman contests, and was diagnosed in high school with Tourette's syndrome. But books are his first love - Josh's earliest memories involve fantastic adventures between the pages of Gulliver’s Travels and a passionate infatuation with Fern from Charlotte’s Web. Everything in Josh’s life - from his Mormon upbringing, to finally finding love, to learning to control his tics through lifting - circles back to a close connection with books.

Cold City: A Repairman Jack Novel

If you’ve never read a Repairman Jack novel, this is the place to begin. It’s 1990. A twenty-one-year-old named Jack has dropped out of college, leaving his old life behind to build a new one in New York City. Manhattan’s rough edges are jagged enough to shred any unwary newcomer, but perhaps not one who is determined to stay off the grid, at any cost, in the busiest metropolis on earth. And to do so, he’ll have to take jobs of a less than legal nature.

Publisher's Summary

"So, my beautiful fat girlfriend, Cassidy, is threatening to kick me to the curb again, my best friend suddenly wants to put the brakes on our lives of fabulous fun, my mom and big sister are plotting a future in which I turn into an atomic vampire, and my dad, well, my dad is a big fat question mark that I'm not sure I want the answer to.

"Some people would let a senior year like this get them down. Not me. I'm Sutter Keely, master of the party. I'm your man when it comes to cranking the wild times. But don't mistake a midnight philosopher like me for nothing more than a shallow party boy.

"Just ask Aimee, the new girl in my life. She saw the depth of the Sutterman from that first moment when she found me passed out on the front lawn. Okay, so she's a social disaster; but that's where I come in. Isn't it my duty to show her a splendiferous time, and then let her go forth and prosper?

Y"es, life is weird, but I embrace the weird. Let everyone else go marching off into their great shining futures if they want. Me, I've always been more than content to tip my whiskey bottle and take a ride straight into the heart of the spectacular now."

What the Critics Say

"Lulled into believing he is happy in spite of his father's abandonment and his mother's emotional neglect, Sutter is an authentic character, and his unsteady sense of himself, as well as his relationships with his friends, will strike a chord with teen readers." (Booklist)

There are people in the world who have so much potential but just let everything go right down the drain. People who can’t help but make bad choices. And though they’re witty, kind, and charming – they have issues – they have problems. But they just can’t seem to help themselves. Have you ever known anyone like this? I haven’t and I think that may be why I felt both disconnected and connected with this book and with Sutter Keely. Disconnected in that I genuinely did not understand why he was doing what he was doing. And connected in that my heart ached for him – I wanted him to make the right choices for himself. I can’t recall how many times I wanted to jump into this book and scream at Sutter – tell him how he was going down the wrong path, suggest to him how to get help – that he needed help.

Addiction and substance abuse are scary – but these things real – and there are people out there battling them every day. To watch someone self-destruct is a painful and sad thing I think mostly because there is nothing you can do about it – the person is doing it to themselves. Even when loved ones and friends try to intervene, it doesn’t always work – the person doesn’t always listen. I enjoyed this book because it shows the pain and that sadness that accompany these types of situation. The Spectacular Now reminded me that these people are real and these things are happening to them. I think the saddest thing in the book is that Sutter doesn’t even realize what he’s doing to himself.

Though this book isn’t one I’d recommend to everyone, if you like books with a more serious tone to them, pick this one up.

The beginning of the story showed promise and was an interesting premise but it was like a movie that shows everything in the trailer. I'm not sure why this story was worthy of a novel. There was no story really.

If you could sum up The Spectacular Now in three words, what would they be?

Melodramatic teenage saga.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

I thought that the plot was fairly flat until Sutter meets Amy. Things pick up after that, but I felt that nothing much happened along the way. The story seemed to be more about Sutter's inward emotional journey as influenced by Amy.

Which character – as performed by MacLeod Andrews – was your favorite?

I liked Sutter as voiced by Andrews the best. I think he imbued him with the perfect amount of nonchalance and devil-may-care attitude.

Any additional comments?

I took a chance on this book after hearing a review of the feature film on NPR. At first, I felt like the story was being read to me by a southern frat boy. The plot was so dry and meandering and I felt that I was going to be stuck in Sutter's head for 6+ hours. However, having recently been a teenager myself, I do remember the constant navel gazing that takes place at that age when one is trying so hard to distinguish themselves from the pack. In the end, though, the book just made me incredibly sad because Sutter is seemingly left in the dust.

Overall this was an enjoyable book. It could have (and arguably should have) been more cautionary. I found my self wondering if the author originally considered a darker ending, but then backed down for editorial or commercial reasons. I personally would have found that more satisfying. That being said the narration was excellent and I think that this is an excellent Y.A. read especially with some parental discussion to go along with it.

A good reason why I liked this audiobook as much as I did is because the narrator, MacLeod Andrews, was so wonderful. I laughed out loud so many times because of something Sutter said. I swear every time the narrator spoke for Crystal it sounded a bit like his tongue was dead weight in his mouth and he needed to swallow some spit.I just couldn't keep a straight face while listening to him; he was so entertaining! I especially thought he did a perfect vocal rendition of Sutter Keely, capturing his vibrant, awe-inspired take on life and occasionally sounding slightly slurred like a buzzed Sutter would. Sutter is a high school senior who totes a flask and constantly spikes his big 7-Up with liquor. He's the quintessential life of the party: everyone knows and likes him. Sure, he may take the fun a bit too far sometimes but, after all, it's nothing to get too hung up about. Along side of the humor in Sutter's life is a touch of sadness. Sutter's dad is absent, his mom and step-dad are uninvolved, his girlfriend just dumped him and his best friend is no longer as available as he once was. Into his life comes Aimee Finecky, a socially inept girl whom Sutter decides to help loosen up a bit. Meanwhile, she tries to get him to make some major changes in his life. Sutter is a good person and he tries to do right by Aimee but his means of doing so will leave many readers unsatisfied. We want more from Sutter. But it's OK... that's life and at the end of the book Sutter's outlook is as solid as it ever was.

Hmmm...I don't want to "spoil" this book, but I'd like to have seen it go somewhere else. As someone who has lived and worked with alcoholics, this is tough to listen to. Sutter is the worst kind, in that he is charming and funny and smart and clearly has many good intentions. He seems to care about other people to the degree that he can, it's just that alcohol gets in the way--big time. But it is so frustrating that he can't see this. It is a great book for al the reasons it is painful and frustrating. The main problem I have is that this book, like drunks like Sutter, makes drunkenness and alcoholism look in many ways funny and charming. The dark comes through, but maybe not enough.

If you’ve listened to books by Tim Tharp before, how does this one compare?

First one.

Have you listened to any of MacLeod Andrews’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, but I would like to hear more. Great tone and story telling. (Almost too good in a way for this book--adds to Sutter's charm even more.)

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

I gather it is. I am curious to see it, though like many first person narrations I suspect a film will lack something that the book has. I also hope that the movie doesn't romanticize substance abuse any more than the book already almost does.

Any additional comments?

I'm sure some people would not see this book as making light of/minimizing/romanticizing alcohol abuse. The reader sees consequences that Sutter either misses or minimizes. Still since we are in Sutter's mind, we are inundated by his justifications and "spin." Brilliant look through the eyes of a young alcoholic. Also sad and frustrating, and to me, too close to an (attempted) justification.

I would recommend this book.It's so true to teen romances because girls would often fall for these guys that don't know how good they have it and they throw it all away to protect girls or hurt them because there selfish life pursuit.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Sitter in a way reflected me in away. Dating the quiet nerdy girl but longing to figure why his past is better without him.

Which scene was your favorite?

The part where Sutter is telling Aimee to swear to relieve stress and the weight of the world.

Sutter is a high school senior who is wise beyond his years. He is heroic in many ways, but tragic in even more ways. His compulsion to pursue a good buzz and a good time prevents him from making the deep and lasting relationships that he yearns for. He knows that to love and be loved is what's really important in life but that would require him to have a sense of the future. The present is the only thing that has any real meaning for Sutter and he fears that he will never be worthy of the love he desperately seeks.

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